Category: Pop Petitions

What’s up, Poptropicans? Lucky Joker here popping in with a brand new Pop Petition! Here, I’ll be listing what I would like to see added (or in this case, re-added) into the game to make the game even more enticing. Let’s pop right into it, shall we?

1) Multiverse

In my opinion, Multiverse was one of Poptropica’s best features. It was first introduced to the game in the summer of 2009 and offered a great hangout-with-friends experience in the largely single-player-based game that Poptropica was and still is.

Sure, we have our common rooms. However, they’re not as good for meeting up with specific friends (and even posed a challenge for us when organizing our most recent Poppies party). If that’s not bad enough, most of the minigames were withdrawn along with the removal of Multiverse. These include: Paint War, Hoops, Pathwise, Soupwords (one of my favorites), and Sudoku (my absolute favorite!). I hope Poptropica can convert Multiverse into AS3 (their newer game engine) soon.

2) Friends Page

“LJ, there still is a friends page, silly. What are you talking about?”

Right you are, anonymous reader — and I really like it too! The wallpaper and sticker wall customization is a plus, and the friendship interaction options such as the like button and message board are things we didn’t have before. On the downside, though, there’s a ton of stuff missing that I took for granted on the original friends page.

Firstly: pop quizzes (Tall Melon also talked about this in his Pop Petition guest post last year). These have been gone a while — even before the old friends page was replaced. It was nice to be able to show a bit of your personality through answering various things about yourself, and it was just that little extra something to do when you were bored.

Second: in-game stats. On the current profile page, it displays how many islands a person has completed, but not which ones exactly. It was really convenient to see which islands you’d completed by viewing your medallion collection. Now, you have to go to the map and check more carefully… oh wait, some of the islands aren’t even there anymore (more on this later). Also, the battle ranking and tribe tiles are completely gone. Not to mention only 25 of your friends will show up on your friends list at a time. If you have any more than that, sorry!

3) Costume Collector

screenshot from Magic Heart in Poptropica

Although this feature at face value may seem pointless considering we have a costume closet with a much larger capacity of outfit space, it actually had some good use, and it’s sad to see it gone.

For one, who wouldn’t want three extra costume slots, am I right? Also, I know a few people who had rare pieces stored in their costume collector from years ago. They were pretty upset when those were suddenly gone. Creators, please bring this feature (and our costumes) back if at all possible! 🤞

4) Original Islands

Some of Poptropica’s greatest adventures — the ones that shaped most of our childhoods and made Poptropica what it is today (like Counterfeit, Nabooti, and Cryptids) are no longer playable. It just isn’t the same without all of our beloved islands on the map, and in fact, it feels like a huge part of the game has disappeared (after all, 29 of the 42 islands are gone!).

I can only hope the Poptropica Creators are actively working on bringing these islands back, and all of the other features for that matter.

As some of you may know, these features are still accessible through idk the glitcher’steleporter link, but Poptropica’s vast majority of players are unaware of this and don’t have that option.

I’m sure there are more features we’d all like to see make a comeback in the future, but that’s for another Pop Petition. So, what do you guys think? Do you agree with my list? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

Thank you all for reading, and I’ll talk to you in the next one. Pop on!

For those who don’t know, or need a refresher, Mighty Action Force is a Trading Card Game (TCG), which is a game where you collect different cards or trade them with others to build a deck and compete against others).

Now, I am a TCG fan (I play Cardfight Vanguard, a world-famous tradingcard game), so when I saw the Mighty Action Force TCG, I felt that thegame deserved much more care and focus in the world of Poptropica.

So here’s what I’m petitioning: MAF should be released as a multiplayer TCG in the Arcade, so players can collect cards and compete with each other. (In fact, they should make a special room just for this game!)

A collection of Mighty Action Force cards.

Each player would have a basic deck, but that could be just the beginning. Single cards and booster packs could be obtained through quests, mini-games, trades, or purchased through credits. With so many characters on Poptropica, the possibilities for new cards are endless.

The game would be played against other players, head-to-head, in real time. A few new rules could be introduced to this game, like a clan system, the ability to boost your action with the power of another card, and tobe able to defend against opponents’ attacks with the cards in one’s hand.

Poptropica has a lot of games in the Arcade—but nothing like this. It would be a great addition to the player experience, so I’d love to see it happen.

Until next time, stay popping!

Beefy Penguin out.

Hope you enjoyed this Pop Petition guest post by Beefy Penguin! If you did, be sure to check out our other Pop Petitions!

The Poptropica Help Blog welcomes interesting Poptropica insights from anyone in the Poptropica community with thoughts to share. You can find some tips and guidelines on our page on how to Write for the PHB, and share blog posts on the PHC.

This is a guest post by Incredible Hamburger (username: popguy6) petitioning for all islands, especially member-locked islands, to be made available to all. Enjoy!

Hey there, I’m Incredible Hamburger! (But not the kind of hamburger you would have for dinner…)

The reason I’m writing this Pop Petition is to convince the Poptropica team to make all membership-locked islands playable for non-members too. You know, the ones that say on the map when you roll over them, “demo for non-members.” I think a demo’s not enough, and here’s why:

First, there are kids like me who for one reason or another can’t get a membership. For me, it’s because my parents won’t let me pay for anything, because the cost is not in our budget. If I tried to buy a membership, they’d probably ban me from playing the game altogether! (Yes, Poptropica membership costs less than other games, but still.)

Besides, I really want to play the Wimpy Kid islands, Wimpy Wonderland and Wimpy Boardwalk. They’re the best! The graphics are very fun — they’re in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid style, so it feels like you are actually there. And the gameplay is even more fun. Your character (Poptropican) can talk to Greg, Manny, Rowley, Grandpa, Gramma, and more Wimpy Kid characters! Jeff Kinney really created something magical with Wimpy Kid.

On that note, I could say the rest of the member-locked islands have a similar effect, too. The members-only islands are all sponsored islands, meaning they’re based on other franchises, such as the Magic Tree House books for Red Dragon Island. Again, Poptropica makes it feel like you’re actually there in those worlds and with those characters (like Big Nate, Greg Heffley, Charlie Brown, and more). That’s why I love Poptropica so much, and I’d even say I feel like life is Poptropica.

It’s true that there are a couple of sponsored islands that are accessible to all (Timmy Failure and Galactic Hot Dogs), and I sure hope it stays that way. I’d also love to see a Captain Underpants Island in the future. But the point is, everyone should get to play every island.

So, Poptropica Creators, please: make the islands open to all! There are lots of people like me who just don’t have the means to get a membership, but would love to play every island, especially the ones that are currently locked for non-members. Give us a chance at them, too!

Until next time! Buh-bye! Incredible Hamburger out… for dinner. 🍔

—IH

Hope you enjoyed this Pop Petition guest post by Incredible Hamburger! If you did, be sure to check out our other Pop Petitions!

The Poptropica Help Blog welcomes interesting Poptropica insights from anyone in the Poptropica community with thoughts to share. You can find some tips and guidelines on our page on how to Write for the PHB. We also encourage sharing blog posts on the PHC.

This is a guest post by Quick Fang petitioning for a feature for pets on Poptropica to have their own profiles and befriend other pets. Enjoy!

Hey Poptropicans! It’s Quick Fang here with a request for the Creators.

So my pet kitten in Poptropica, Snowball, has been feeling a little lonely and bored these days. After all, as a Poptropican adventurer, I’ve been a little occupied with, you know, exploring islands, decking out my clubhouse, and buying new things for my pet and myself.

Ever since the pets feature was introduced, I’ve been thinking about the idea of having friends for our pets. This feature should be able to create new communities for our pets in Poptropica, so I think it’s worth a shot. And pets are even better than just followers, cuz’ we can deck them out in smashing outfits.

Sure, we could just meet up in the Arcade with our pets, but maybe Pet-tropicans (if you will) can do more to stay connected than just hanging out in the Arcade when their owners bring them there. Just think about it!

I’m wondering if Poptropica could actually make a friends profile for pets: the profiles could provide some basic info on our pets like their name (and yes, let’s have the ability to name our pets officially), their birthday (the day they were adopted from the Pet Barn), their colour, and some fun facts about them.

Or take it a step further and create templates for more full-fledged Petsonas (pet personas, which are like Popsonas, or Poptropica personas, but for pets). There are a couple examples on my blog.

Sometimes, pets really do look alike. But with the help of the Colorizer and costumes, you can mix and match to let people know that this really is your unique pet! So I’ll leave you with the Petsona of my kitten, Snowball:

Snowball enjoys the cold of Survival Island, playing outside, milk and fish. I’m her only friend, but I know Snowball would love more!

Share your pet with the Poptropica community, perhaps by commenting on this post! Stay awesome. This is Quick Fang, popping out.

The Poptropica Help Blog welcomes interesting Poptropica insights from anyone in the Poptropica community with thoughts to share. You can find some tips and guidelines on our page on how to Write for the PHB. We also encourage sharing blog posts on the PHC.

Hey Poptropicans! Here’s a guest post by Gentle Fang on how the Colorizer helped her express herself on Poptropica Original and why such a feature ought to be more accessible to all on Poptropica Worlds. Check it out, and enjoy. ~ 🐠

Hey guys! It’s Gentle Fang! If you have never heard of me, I did my own MPIP back in 2017 about a year ago, and also wrote a guest post about several islands in 2016. I have been playing Poptropica for about 6 years now (not all that consistently), and I really enjoy exploring islands and getting involved in the community.

As I have been playing for quite some time, I found that I had completed almost all the islands and had little left to do. As such, when Poptropica Worlds was first announced, I was overjoyed. I was so happy they were finally going to make new islands, add new material, and improve upon the characters.

When I got around to playing the new Poptropica Worlds once it came out, however, I found that I was underwhelmed. First off, talk about bad first impressions—the game took FOREVER to load. I had always been able to switch from scene to scene in a second on Poptropica Original, but I found that on Worlds it took quite some time.

When I was finally able to get into my closet to change my character, I was quite upset to find that the Colorizer — one of my favorite parts of Poptropica Original — was for members only. (Well, non-members get a few pre-selected colors for free. But that’s nothing compared to Poptropica Original.)

My style is what sets me apart from the crowd. For years, I’ve had an outfit that was a mixture of all my favorite costumes, a little pet cat I called Buttons, and most importantly my bright turquoise hair. That hair color was the only thing about me that never changed. Hairstyles change (in real life, I recently cut off over 6 inches of hair). My outfit is almost constantly being modified (for some reason I went through a phase where I dressed like a police officer). My character also sometimes has glasses, and recently got freckles. The entire look was my way of expressing myself.

Most of my character’s traits represented something about my personality: her diva outfit showed my dramatic personality, her occasional glasses represented that although I need glasses I hardly ever wear them, and the new freckles reflected the ones that appeared on my actual face. But the hair didn’t represent my physical state — it represented my boldness.

Although I am not currently allowed to dye my hair, I know brightly colored hair would turn heads. That’s what I like to do — I am not someone who enjoys blending in or staying in the crowd. I wasn’t allowed to get a membership on any gaming sites because my parents didn’t trust technology that much, so I couldn’t buy anything that only members received. This meant I only had a minuscule amount of clothes and accessories to choose from. Since the Colorizer was free for everyone on Poptropica Original, and came with a wide array of colors, I was sucked in.

Six years of turquoise hair later, I was more than disappointed when my favorite color was taken away too, becoming a privilege only given to members. Of course, I attempted to get my mother to agree to buy me a membership, to no avail. I know that there are other kids or teenagers like me who cannot purchase a membership for whatever reason, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be able to express themselves.

I understand that memberships make the company money to keep Poptropica free. But I also think that things that were not under lock and key in Poptropica Original should remain that way in Worlds.

So, in closing, I would like to propose that the Poptropica Worlds Colorizer to ought to be accessible in its entirety to everyone.

This nifty tool is something that I quite enjoyed for more than half my life, and I would be very upset if it was removed from the game permanently for players without membership. I would very much like for this amazing tool to be made free for all.

The Poptropica Help Blog welcomes interesting Poptropica insights from anyone in the Poptropica community with thoughts to share. You can find some tips and guidelines on our page on how to Write for the PHB. We also encourage sharing blog posts on the PHC.

Hey Poptropicans, SD here to bring you another Pop Petitions post! Like our islands petition, I want to focus on a very important game element. So today, we’ll be taking a look at what makes a good character engaging!

Unlike previous petitions, this post won’t emphasize so much on what the Creators are “doing wrong,” but more on simply what we love about a great character, and thus what we hope to see more of. Let’s get started!

#1: Character Development

We understandably can’t see a whole lot of development in every single character we meet in Poptropica. That’s just too unrealistic, as we can’t learn every detail about everyone. Still, development is important when it comes to making characters with depth.

Most importantly, we need to see development in major characters that have an influence on plot. I’m talking about those who get the spotlight, the most prominent example being villains. If every villain were the same, Poptropica would get pretty darn boring, pretty darn fast.

The game isn’t a novel or a movie, so we can’t expect a whole lot, but I for one still love seeing someone’s personality evolve. Is that asking too much from a kid’s game? I really don’t think so, as it’s kinda important to teach kids that people can change, especially after slowly learning a big lesson. Isn’t that what educational games are about? While 2D art can be amazing, 2D characters are much less impressive.

#2: Diverse Clothing

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Customizing is a huge part of Poptropica, at least for me. Costume contests are hosted, ASGs are made, rare items are collected, etc. So, fans are always looking out for cool new clothes! Besides ads and the occasional store update, NPCs are the main way to find unique new accessories. There isn’t much diversity in things like body type in Poptropica, but clothing can still be wide-ranged!

When designing a character, their clothing is obviously very important. What they’re wearing gives insight on their personality and significance in the island, but it should also catch the eye of various players. We’ve all seen development sketches of our favorite NPCs! The Creators can be meticulous in getting designs to be perfect.

The Creators have started to implement more modern fashion, which I personally think is a step in the right direction. These modern clothing options are more likely to appeal to newer players. The more unique clothing can be found throughout the game, the more diverse Poptropicans can be made, which is more accurate to real life. Having lots of detail in an outfit can really make a Poptropican feel individual!

#3: Captivating Dialogue

Other than appearance, dialogue is a prominent way in which a Poptropican’s personality shines through. The way someone talks can hint at what kind of person they are, in addition to their role in an island (just like clothing). Our own Poptropican’s speech can’t easily match our own in real life, but the variety of NPCs’ dialogue options are kinda endless.

Word choice is particularly important in a kid’s game, as it can be used as a tool to expand the player’s vocabulary, but can’t be so complex that it’s hard to understand. Humor is often used throughout speech in Poptropica, which is perfect for the tone of the game. Plus, this isn’t a novel so characters shouldn’t be spouting out paragraphs upon paragraphs of text.

The back and forth conversation can’t be super long, but it also needs to move the plot forward. In order to not be a chore to read, the script needs to be captivating. Jokes and lines that build excitement are strongly needed! A balance needs to be reached in order to not only be easy for the target audience to read, but also entertaining!

#4: Individual Personality

I’ve already mentioned this factor in previous categories, but I still feel like it deserves its own spot. In any form of entertainment, whether that be literature, movies, shows, or games, the characters need to be unique! A pretty simple concept, but sometimes hard to make a reality.

There are many ways to show a character’s personality, even in a simple game like Poptropica. These include appearance and dialogue, like I’ve said, but also things like actions and location. A favorite character should be hard to choose, merely because how diverse real people are. It’s important to keep the young target audience in mind, and make many significant characters easy to relate to in some way.

Similar to real life, not all Poptropicans should be perfect. When developing a character, flaws and quirks need to be embraced just as much as desired traits! Doing this gives even an NPC a bit more depth, believably, and interest. Rounding out these characters makes a game so much more immersive and enjoyable! Seriously, I would die for some of my favorite characters.

#5: A Purpose

Something easy to overlook, but still (in my opinion) important. Characters should not just be included in a scene to take up space. NPCs need some purpose to be where they are, to wear what they’re wearing, and to say what they say. Does background Poptropican #17 catch your eye?

Before you ignore my point, I know that we can’t take a close up look at every single minor islander and see what their purpose in life is. It isn’t necessary to think that significantly on characters that don’t have that much impact on plot. Save that for your fan-fics. Still, Poptropicans shouldn’t be randomly places on streets. Unless the Early Poptropicans on main-street just really like standing in the sun all day? No shame in that I guess.

Unless you’re going for an abandoned, Steamworks Island theme, characters should be generously placed around an island to create atmosphere. That, like other elements I’ve touched on, adds to a sense of immersion. Still, some thought should be put into why a character is a certain way, relatively simple purposes included. This is similar to how actors create backstories for their characters, to really give them life! Even a mundane purpose, because it’s not uncommon, makes a character realistic.

Remember that this post isn’t meant to bash the Creators, but instead voice the opinions and suggestions of fans. In fact, there are many instances in which Poptropica characters check all these boxes! We all want Poptropica to be as awesome as possible!

So, what are your thoughts? Do you agree with our list? What kinds of characters do you want to see in the future? Be sure to let us know what other Pop Petitions we should make as well!

This is a guest post written by Tallmeloniscool, a Poptropica player in the community. In this post he’ll be talking about what features he wants to see returned to Pop Original. Enjoy!

For all the talk of focusing on Poptropica Worlds as the future of Poptropica, the Creators are still updating the original Poptropica. This strikes me as a bad move—once Flash goes away, won’t all these updates not matter anymore?

I’m not sure why they’re still updating Poptropica Original—maybe they don’t have enough Unity coders working on Worlds?—but since they haven’t let it go just yet, here are the features I’d really like to see return to the original Pop.

#1: Bring back Realms

Lots of people want Poptropica Realms to return. I see people in YouTube comments, the Poptropica Help Chat, and many other places wishing that Realms was brought back. Comments like this: “I have never been to Poptropica Realms, it looks really fun” or “I really wanted to finish my house.”

What I find even worse is that the Poptropica Creators never told us why Realms is down or when it is going to be fixed. So if fixing Realms is going to take longer than it already has, then the Creators should at least make a blog post on the Creators’ Blog saying what’s wrong with Realms.

#2: Bring back the old visual map

If you’ve been playing Poptropica for a few years, you might remember on the non-SUIs, you had this map where you can see where you were on the island. But when the Poptropica Creators made it so that the SUI (sound-updated island) menu shows on the non-SUI islands, it ended up removing the classic maps and replacing them with the home map where you choose islands.

What I recommend to the Poptropica Creators is to change it so when you click on the map it would show the old visual map. Then add a new button that teleports you to the home map. That way we Poptropicans can have the old map, and a way to instantly go to the home map.

#3: Fix the way the islands are organized on the home map

The way the islands are currently organized on the home map needs some fixing. For example, Mission Atlantis (a medium-hard island) is in the easy category, while Early Poptropica and Shark Tooth (two of the easiest islands!) are listed among the challenging islands. Also, the adventure category could definitely list more than four islands.

#4: Add a way to answer pop quizzes

When the home screen changed so that it took you straight to Home Island as opposed to the old home screen, Poptropicans could not access the home screen and answer the pop quizzes anymore. What will a new Poptropican do to get these quizzes?

My solution would be to bring the quizzes to the Home Island billboard, so we’d have another reason to log in again!

#5: Bring back old store items & costumes

In my opinion, the Poptropica Creators took a real step backward by removing so many old store items, even though they’re rotating the stock every month. Why? Considering that Poptropica Original won’t be playable after the year 2020, what they should do is add back as many store items as possible—all the limited time items and costumes, and even ones that were forgotten.

This would allow old players to feel nostalgic about these old items in the game, and for the newer players to experience the old and limited time items. Though this may degrade the rarity value of some items/costumes, since Poptropica Original is not going to last forever, I really think this does not matter. What matters more is that we get to enjoy this version of Poptropica while it lasts!

So that’s the end of my guest post on the PHB. I hope that you enjoyed and agreed, and I hope you have a great day. BYE!

The Poptropica Help Blog welcomes interesting Poptropica insights from anyone in the Poptropica community with thoughts to share. You can find some tips and guidelines on our Write for the PHB page. We also encourage sharing blog posts on the PHC.